In God's name

Like the new worlds of past centuries, Iraq has become fertile ground as missionaries spread their word, Paul McGeough reports from Baghdad.

After the declaration of "a war for souls" by American Christians, the arrival in Iraq of missionaries hauling nearly 1 million Arabic translations of the Bible has become a new security flashpoint.

Evangelical churches have been opening at a rate of one a month since the fall of Baghdad and dozens of predominantly American missionary teams have embarked on programs of humanitarian work or proselytising - or both.

Non-religious humanitarian workers accuse them of exposing all foreigners to increased violence because of the risk that they are inflaming Muslim sensitivities. And after the murder last week of four US missionaries in the northern city of Mosul, an American church worker refused to talk to the Herald because the reporting of any identifying information could make him and his church a target. "You guys [reporters] are spotters for snipers," he said.

A spate of deadly attacks on foreigners has left US occupation officials in Iraq confused as to whether the four were targeted because they were foreign or because they were missionaries. But they have taken the precaution of removing a list of about 50 Christian aid organisations from files that can be viewed publicly in Baghdad.

However, Sheik Fatih Kashif Ghitaa, the head of Baghdad's Strategic Studies Centre, was in no doubt. "Most Iraqis think that the US wants to erase Islam, so this would have fed into the thinking of the attackers at Mosul," he said. "There will be more such attacks."

Iraq's population of 25 million is mostly Muslim, but there are an estimated 1 million followers of various Christian creeds who, like Muslims, were allowed to practise only if they adhered to strictures imposed by the deposed regime of Saddam Hussein. All are free now.

However, Muslims who convert to Christianity are described by fellow Muslims as "renegades" and, according to some sources, can face death for the "sin" of rejecting Islam.

And the Christians still suffer. As operators of the country's liquor stores they have been subjected to arson and weapons attacks from an Islamist campaign to rid Iraq of Western vice. And because they are not tribal, and so are unable to defend themselves, their children are frequently taken hostage in a postwar wave of kidnappings.

Now they harbour a new fear: while some of their churches say they refuse to accept funds, advice and co-operation offered by US Christians, all fret that their churches might soon be targeted in the same way that hotels accepting Westerners as guests have come under fire.

Before last week's Mosul attack, some of the new Christian arrivals volunteered that they were handing out Christian tracts and seeking converts. Now they are quick to claim themselves to be non-proselytising, humanitarian workers or evangelists who confine their activities to the Christian community.

But when a US Christian website reported the death of the missionaries in Mosul it left a question mark on such claims, stating: "As a tactic in such sensitive areas, missionaries engage in 'good works', reaching out through humanitarian efforts and sharing their faith with appreciative and curious locals only when asked about it."

The unguarded rhetoric and the pumped-up claims on these American websites are seen by some Iraqis as proof that the invasion of their country was part of a continuing US war against Islam.

A former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jerry Vines, has spoken of Muhammad the prophet as a "demon-obsessed pedophile". Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham and operator of Samaritan's Purse, which is big in Iraq, has declared Islam to be a "very evil and wicked religion". The Baptist website includes a depiction of the world titled "Map of the Lost", on which the Middle East is black to depict its near-total adherence to Islam.

When a senior executive of the Southern Baptists International Mission Board, John Brady, launched an appeal in the US late last year, he said: "[You] must understand that there is a war for souls under way in Iraq. [We] have prayed for years that Iraq would somehow be opened to the gospel."

One of his returned Iraq missionaries, who was not named for "security reasons", told a church conference in the US that Iraq needed mission families that would "reach other families and cause the kind of church-planting movements that will truly change history there".

But alluding to missionary worries that the free movement they enjoy to and from Iraq under the US occupation could end if the Americans hand sovereignty back to an Iraqi government on June 30, another Baptist executive told the same conference: "Right now we have a 90-day, maybe a 120-day, opportunity to get into Iraq. Everything is open to us. If we will give, and if we will go, we may very well see God do something we've always dreamed about."

At several of the new evangelical churches, which draw anywhere between 100 and 500 worshippers to services, pastors were reluctant in the past few days to reveal if they had received foreign donations or help to set up.

Asked about seeking converts, Pastor Raad Josef Easa, 28, at the Free Methodist Church, was cryptic: "We are open for all people. This is God's house and there is freedom of religion in the new Iraq."

At the Light Independent Church of Baghdad, the pastor declined to be named. But he accused the foreign missionaries of attaching strings to offers of financial assistance: "When we asked them for money they said that we would have to be like them. They made big mistakes in going to Mosul and they are causing security problems for all of us.

"Muslims are committed to God, too, so it would be better for these people to encourage Muslims to be good Muslims than for them to switch to Christianity. I don't seek converts."

The American church worker who was worried about snipers - and who is not a Baptist - insisted that the policy of his US-based organisation was to encourage Iraqi churches to be self-supporting, governing and propagating. Arguing that even hundreds of missionaries were unlikely to dent the rock-solid following of Islam, he said: "[But] everyone should share Jesus Christ with their neighbour. It seems to be OK for Xerox and McDonald's [to come to Iraq] but heaven forbid that a church would say that it has work to do here."

Sheik Fatih Kashif Ghitaa, at the Strategic Studies Centre, did not question the sincerity of missionaries on the ground, but he said he had grave suspicions about those who sent them to Iraq.

Referring to strong Christian right-wing support for President George Bush, he said: "They are being sent for political and military advantage for the US. Just as you can't separate the Muslim from Islam, you can't separate the Westerner from Christianity.

"If it was so urgent to save Iraqi souls, they could have gone to the north of Iraq [where US protection placed the Kurdish people beyond the reach of Saddam] any time in the last 13 years - but they didn't.

"Coming here now will provoke Iraqi extremists. Shiites and Sunnis will oppose them violently. After Saddam, the Iraqi religions are enjoying their own revival, so Christians will be seen as Crusaders - and that's very dangerous.

"If they cause fighting here, then the Iraqi Christians will be victims of the Muslims as much as the missionaries will be. So you have to see it all as part of the ongoing conspiracy against us."

Sheik Fatih said that a recent meeting of combined Islamic and Christian leaders in Baghdad had discussed issuing a fatwa against the missionaries, but had decided against the move in the belief that the foreign missionaries might capitalise on it.

Instead, he said: "Our decision was to put our religion in our hearts and our country in our minds. Otherwise there would be disaster."